Oken Wall Art

Oken (Born 1779 – Died 1851) was a botanist, naturalist, ornithologist and biologist who was based in Germany. He was born Lorenz Okenfuss and studied medicine and natural history at the universities of Würzburg and Freiburg. He proceeded to the University of Göttingen, where he became an unsalaried lecturer (Privatdozent), and that’s when he shortened his name to Oken. He published a small work which was the first of a series of works that established him as a leader of the movement of "Natural Philosophy" in Germany. In the book he extended the philosophical principles to physical science which Kant Immanuel had applied to morality and epistemology. Oken had been preceded in this by Fichte Gottlieb who declared that all that was necessary was an organized coordination of these materials – that was after acknowledging that the materials for a universal science had been discovered by Kant.

Fichte took on this task in his "Wissenschaftslehre" (Doctrine of Science), whose aim was to use priori means to construct all knowledge. This attempt was elaborated further by the philosopher Schelling Friedrich, because Fichte merely sketched it out. Oken managed to build on Schelling's work, and was able to produce a synthesis of what he attributed to Schelling as having achieved. He produced the 7-volume series with engravings by Susemihl Johann, and published between 1839 and 184l by Hoffman in Stuttgart. He sketched the outlines of the scheme which he later on devoted himself to perfecting. Oken contended that there are only five animal classes: Dermatozoa, Glossozoa, Rhinozoa, Otozoa and Ophthalmozoa.